Monday, February 1, 2010

PRELIMINARY January 2010 SST Anomaly Update

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The January 2010 SST data through the NOAA NOMADS website won’t be official until January 8th, according to the schedule on the NOAA Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature Analysis Frequently Asked Questions webpage. But NOMADS as usual has produced preliminary values. The following graphs include the preliminary Global and NINO3.4 SST anomalies for January 2010. I’ve also included the official weekly data through January 27, 2010.

The downturn is confirmed by the weekly NINO3.4 SST anomaly data, with the most recent value centered on January 27, 2010. It has dropped 0.71 in five weeks.http://i50.tinypic.com/ih2vtj.png
Weekly NINO3.4 SST Anomalies

Monthly Global SST anomalies have dropped 0.032 deg C since December 2009, but that does not mean they won’t take another swing upwards or remain at the elevated levels for a month or two.http://i50.tinypic.com/xfrujq.png
Monthly Global SST Anomalies

Weekly Global SST Anomalies are still elevated and have not yet shown a sign of taking the normal downturn in response to the drop in NINO3.4 SST anomalies.http://i47.tinypic.com/2z7k4le.png
Weekly Global SST Anomalies

3 comments:

Over at WUWT the big discussion is over Roy Spencer's satellite numbers and it seems like you are the only one posting much on ocean heat content and sea surface temperature so I wandered over here.

My problem is getting a handle on the entire energy balance sheet, rather than just focusing on one measure of temperature. The quoted temperature changes (disregarding anomalies) on a monthly basis represent massive flows of energy - much too big to have anything to do with actual gain or loss of energy from the system as a whole. Therefore they must represent flows from one component of the system to another.

I am not an accountant, but I like to think of these as flows of funds between different accounts and what I am wondering is how many accounts there are and are we able to measure the energy content in these accounts (yet).

I can think of four that we seem to be measuring currently - troposphere (satellites) surface air, sea surface, and deep ocean (is that what you quote under ocean heat content?).

Is this enough to get a reasonable accounting? Or is this the source of "Trenberth's travesty"?

In the first instance, if one could just account for the "global temperature" difference between summer and winter then it would be a start.

Sorry if you have already done this kind of thing - but at least you can just point me to the relevant post if that is the case.

Rob Potter: You asked with respect to the temperature of the deep ocean, "is that what you quote under ocean heat content?"

The OHC data I present in my posts is a function of temperature and salinity (and other smaller components) for the upper 700 meters of the oceans. So it's not really classified as the deep ocean.

With respect to Kevin Trenberth's travesty comment, it would be best if I provided you with a link to the paper he was referring to in that email. The discussion was more complex than temperature measurements:http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/EnergyDiagnostics09final2.pdf

Comment Policy, SST Posts, and Notes

Comments that are political in nature or that have nothing to do with the post will be deleted.####The Smith and Reynolds SST Posts DOES NOT LIST ALL SST POSTS. I stopped using ERSST.v2 data for SST when NOAA deleted it from NOMADS early in 2009.

Please use the search feature in the upper left-hand corner of the page for posts on specific subjects.####NOTE: I’ve discovered that some of the links to older posts provide blank pages. While it’s possible to access that post by scrolling through the history, that’s time consuming. There’s a quick fix for the problem, so if you run into an absent post, please advise me. Thanks.####If you use the graphs, please cite or link to the address of the blog post or this website.